Independent space-technology desk
Making the cosmos accessible.
Orbit stopped being a national monopoly and started becoming an industry. FlyISS reports on the engineering and the economics that will decide whether a seat above the atmosphere ever costs what a long-haul flight does.
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Why this matters
Affordability is the whole story.
Every argument about humanity's future off Earth eventually collapses into one number: the price of moving a kilogram out of the atmosphere. For thirty years that number sat above $50,000 on the Space Shuttle. Reusable boosters cut it by an order of magnitude, and a fully reusable heavy-lift vehicle would cut it by two more — the difference between a government program and an industry (SpaceDaily).
That shift is already visible in orbit. Private crews now fly multi-day research missions, the first commercial spacewalk happened in September 2024, and the veteran ISS commander Chris Hadfield describes an era in which "it's possible to just buy a ticket and go to space for the price of a luxury car" (Wikipedia, TED Talks Daily transcript).
Meanwhile the platform that made continuous human presence possible is on a clock. The ISS is scheduled to be deliberately deorbited into a remote area of the Pacific in 2030 after hosting more than 4,000 experiments — and at least four commercial stations are competing to inherit its role (Space.com).
FlyISS exists to hold that transition to a standard: source everything, quote accurately, quantify the cost, and treat the reader as someone who could plausibly work in the industry.
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Three ways into the story.
10 dispatches
Frontier Missions & Progress
From Starship's Flight 9 breakup to Artemis's annual landing cadence and the commercial stations racing to replace the ISS — each entry sourced to the operator or agency that published it.
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14 quotations
Voices from the Frontier
Sagan, Tyson, Hadfield, Cox, Mack, Kaku, Aldrin and Musk on why leaving the planet matters — reproduced verbatim, each linked to its source.
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9 claims tested
Myth-Busting: Space Edition
Moon-landing hoaxes, the Van Allen belts, green-screened ISS footage, flat Earth, Nibiru and chemtrails — answered with the physical evidence.
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The strongest argument ever made
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us... every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
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Orbit should be a destination, not a privilege.
A weekly dispatch on launch economics, station programs and the claims worth correcting. No hype, no filler, every figure sourced.
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